Janet Daley was born in America where she began her political life on the Left as an undergraduate at Berkeley. She moved to Britain (and to the Right) in 1965 where she spent nearly twenty years in academic life before becoming a political commentator: all factors that inform her writing on British and American policy and politicians.

Ed Miliband thinks that only government spending can bring 'values'

The most important point in Ed Milband's "major speech" – heavily trailed as a key turning point in his leadership – was made at the very beginning. Forget all the stuff about controlling rail fares and forcing companies to take on apprentices which sounded like the small change of a Gordon Brown Budget. The key to the Mili philosophy was what he himself described as his central theme: how can you create social justice and fairness in hard times?

In other words, when the government has no (or too little) money to spend, how can it impose "values" on society, because, as Mr Miliband put it, "values cost money." So there it is: the core belief of the newly reconstructed Labour party: government spending is the only force in society that can deliver social morality. Hence, what he sees as the central problem of our time (and of his leadership): how can he promise to provide "fairness" when he would as prime minister have almost no money at his disposal?

This refrain was absolutely consistent, presumably because it is too fundamental even to be questioned. Throughout his speech, he relied repeatedly on the assumption that promoting values meant spending public money. ("Some people say [that] fairness is a luxury we can't afford .") I suspect you can see the problem here. He is apparently unrepentant about Labour's fundamental error – absolutely impervious, in fact, to the argument that government is not the unimpeachable arbiter of fairness and the only force for social good.

For him, the absence of government funding is, by definition, an absence of moral progress. So the dilemma must be to find ways around this, rather than to welcome the possibility that in the absence of government intervention, communities or individual members of society might find other ways of helping and supporting one another. Instead of accepting even the possibility that government "getting out of the way " (as he correctly described David Cameron's view) might be a salutary thing, he insisted that it was still entirely the business of goverment to inject social values into national life.

And when the present dire economic circumstances are over and prosperity has returned? Well then, it will be back to Labour business as usual: we will have to guarantee consistent economic growth (put an end to boom and bust?) in order to provide the tax revenues which can enable government to restore values and fairness on a permanent basis. Oh dear.